Monday, March 08, 2010

A Kindle in Every Pot

A talk radio host in Ottawa is going on in amazement about how his wife can sit in their living room and access 270,000 books on her Kindle - so why do we need to spend money on libraries? Well, for one thing none of the recent books on the Kindle are free - only Project Gutenburg and other similar public domain works are. And not only can many families not afford to buy ebooks for the Kindle, they can't afford the Kindle in the first place. I shudder to think how I would have bankrupted my parents if they had had to pay for the stacks of books I would bring back from the bookmobile. Yes, libraries will change - but they're still needed. And talk radio hosts with vacation homes in the Bahamas, and $500 to buy a Kindle, should not assume that everyone has the same standard of living.

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